TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 29
1289 Qalawun, the Sultan of Egypt, captures Tripoli.
1429 Joan of Arc leads French forces to victory over English at Orleans.
1624 Louis XIII appoints Cardinal Richelieu chief minister of the Royal Council of France.
1813 Rubber was patented by J.F. Hummel.
1852 The first edition of Peter Roget’s Thesaurus is published.
1856 Yokut Indians repel a second attack by the ‘Petticoat Rangers,’ a band of civilian Indian fighters at Four Creeks, California.
1861 The Maryland House of Delegates votes against seceding from Union.
1913 Gideon Sundback of Hoboken patents the all-purpose zipper.
1916 Irish republicans abandon the post office in Dublin and surrender unconditionally, marking the end of the Easter Rising
1918 America’s WWI Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, scores his first victory with the help of Captain James Norman Hall.
1945 The Nazi concentration camp of Dachau is liberated by Allied troops.
1945 A day before committing suicide, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun marry
1946 Former Japanese leaders are indicted in Tokyo as war criminals.
1974 President Nixon announced in a nationally broadcast address he will hand over 1200 pages of White House Transcripts that will tell it all about Watergate and will prove his innocence.
1975 The U.S. embassy in Vietnam is evacuated as North Vietnamese forces fight their way into Saigon.
1984 In California, the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor went online after a long delay due to protests.
1992 Four Los Angeles police offices are acquitted of charges stemming from the beating of Rodney King. Rioting ensues.
1994 Israel and the PLO signed an agreement in Paris which granted Palestinians broad authority to set taxes, control trade and regulate banks under self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1997 Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and was dishonorably discharged.
1997 The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 comes into force, outlaws production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons among its signatories.
1998 The U.S., Canada and Mexico end tariffs on $1 billion in NAFTA trade.
2004 The National World War II Memorial between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument a monument to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served during World War II opened to the public in Washington D.C.
2010 Women can now serve on U.S. submarines. The Defense Department had announced that the ban would be lifted in February, and the deadline for Congressional objections was passed at midnight on April 28th.
2011 Kate Middleton marries Prince William in a lavish royal wedding at Westminster Abbey in London. It was estimated that more than 2 billion people watched the event.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
